


love & collecting butterflies

by somanyfeelings



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, High School AU, childhood AU, tbh the treehouse is pretty much a character, tw: minor self harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-17 21:47:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9347813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somanyfeelings/pseuds/somanyfeelings
Summary: "a childhood au where Lena and Kara grow up near each other and are BFFS and they have pillow fights and hang out in Lena's treehouse and carve their names into the tree and then as they grow up they go from BFFs to soulmates"Supercorp High School AU





	

**Author's Note:**

> Based roughly [this tumblr prompt](http://supercorpppp.tumblr.com/post/155943656633/yknow-what-i-need-someone-to-write-a-childhood-au)

Lena is twelve when the moving truck pulls into the house across the street. She kneels on her bed to look out the window, pulls the curtains aside with well-trimmed nails and stares, unblinking.

(Stares in a way that, if her mother were here, she would be scorned for: _be polite, Lena. Don’t stare. Don’t hope._ )

The hem of her skirt digs uncomfortably into the bend of her knee, but Lena finds she does not care, for a girl has come into view. A girl wearing a sunshine yellow cardigan and pigtails, followed by a slightly older one.

A girl her age. Lena decides then and there, watching the stranger skip out of the moving truck with something like ease: a friend.

 

 

(First memory: bobby pins and a dress fit for a princess, and her tattered cat print socks under her shoes because she had insisted, because she had cried. Because her new mother had had better things to do than argue with her.)

(First memory: the gala, the announcement of her adoption. The circus of it all, of her new life. The boy—her brother, her _brother_ —taking her hand and saying, “These parties stink, but I promise it’ll be alright.”)

 

 

The first person she tells is Lex: she takes the stairs two at a time, trips twice. He looks up at her as soon as he enters, turning his chair to face her.

(Mother, she always turned away. But Lex— Lex looked toward her.)

“What’s up, Lena?” He is busy, and she watches him quickly close the notebook and pen with a shred of guilt, but he’s looking at her like he cares, and it means so much to know he _does_ that she speaks anyway.

“There’s a new family. Across the street, in that old house—“ A wave, like he doesn’t already know what house she means. “And there’s a girl around my age, Lex. A new girl!”

(New, like there have been any others. He grins at her, and she realizes that he had been alone once too. Had been, wasn’t anymore, and it is just one more way she hopes to be like him someday.)

“You should go meet her,” he says, and it is genuine, this joy for her. It is a chance, maybe, a chance for something different, better. But as soon as the words are spoken a beat of regret flashes over them both, and the chance flickers back into nothingness, for she cannot go. It is past curfew. It is against the rules that have been tattooed on her brain since the second her last name had become _Luthor_ , and they both know better than to even try to bend them, break them.

“—Tomorrow, of course,” he adds. “Go tomorrow.” The excitement, however, is ruined; she already knows she will not.

 

* * *

 

The treehouse came with the property, lopsided against the grand opulence of house. She fits well in the corner, the dark one in the back that hides itself from the sunlight. She curls her feet in and rests her spine against the uneven curve of the wall, and her fingers trace the notches carved into rough wood: Lex. And above it, newer: Lena.

The ladder creaks, and she shoots up, heart a nervous thump of panic. An unknown face appears, a smile.

“Hi, I’m Kara.”

Lena stares, and Kara falters. (She can only imagine why, only imagine how years of time with Lillian have affected her stare. Is it coldness, anger? Disdain? She feels none of them, but she fears what is written in her gaze nevertheless.)

The girl tries again a moment later: “I— I live across the street. No one answered your door when I knocked sixteen times, so I wanted to come check back here. And I found you!”

It’s a lot to take in, but one part sticks. “You were looking for me?”

“Of course, silly. I just moved here, so I don’t have any friends, but now I do.”

To Kara, it’s as easy as that.

 

 

They meet in the treehouse every day after school for three weeks before Lillian notices her prolonged absences and demands an explanation.

It is given in stumbles, cracks of honesty and a swell of desperation that manifests itself in the pleading clench of her hands. _Friend_ , she says, like it matters to Lillian. My best friend, my only friend.

Lillian forbids her from going to the treehouse again, and Lena spends that afternoon staring out the window in the living room, knowing Kara is waiting, wondering.

 

 

Kara appears at her bedroom window two days later, when the sun has long since set. She knocks once, twice, seven times before Lena peels back the curtain.

“Treehouse?” she says, and Lena has to half read her lips through the moon-dulled glass.

Lena shakes her head. _Can’t_ , she mouthes: cannot disobey, cannot want this.

“I promise we won’t get caught. My sister taught me how to be sneaky.” And Kara—Kara with the smear of chocolate chips across her chin, Kara with the giggle that settles itself deeply against Lena’s heart—is too earnest, too convinced of her own invincibility, and Lena has to say yes.

Lena sneaks out that night. Lena sneaks out the next, and the one after that. She does not know how, but they never get caught.

 

* * *

 

“Why did you come to my window that night?”

It’s been years—three, to be exact; three and somewhere around five months—but Kara knows exactly what she means.

(Kara always gets her. Always has and always will, if Lena has her way.)

(It is an odd sensation, that flutter of yearning she thinks is hope.)

“Because you hadn’t shown up to the treehouse.” They are there now, still tucked into corners across from each other, but their legs have grown long enough for Lena’s toes to brush against the grain of Kara’s jeans.

“How did you know I hadn’t just ditched you?”

“You wouldn’t do that.”

“You had known me for less than a month.” (The real question: why? Why do you believe in me? Why are you still here?)

Kara breathes once, deeply, glances over to where her own name has been carved carefully beside Lena’s, and repeats her words. “You wouldn’t do that.”

 

 

Kara goes away that summer, and Lex is too busy with his friend to ever be home, and she wastes away the hours carving lines and shapes into the wood of the treehouse. She wonders if she could cover it all, carve over every inch with every word she knows and every story she has ever wanted to tell, but she does not have enough to say, and she does not try.

When Kara returns, she goes immediately to the treehouse. She smiles like she always does, and with Kara once again by her feet, Lena is able to breathe again: maybe nothing had changed.

(But something had. Something in the way Kara no longer wore her hair up in pigtails and ponytails but instead let it curl around her collarbone, in the way she went without glasses sometimes, making the clear blue of her eyes all the more visible. In the way Lena noticed these things with trembling fingers that longed to reach out and brush against Kara’s, in the way she quickly pushed the thought away.)

 

* * *

 

She has to find out about Lex through some kid at school, through the whispers that form around her in a cloud: Lex, they say. Lex, Lex, going away. Do you know what he did? The words _beating_ , _bloody_ , all whirl around her, the thunder to his actions’ lightning.

(Answer: no. He didn’t. He couldn’t.)

(Answer: did he?)

She gets home that day and watches through the window as they pack every trinket and jacket and thing in Lex’s room into a series of boxes, and she watches as they drive the boxes away, and she wonders if they are going to try to break down what he did into chunks small enough that they could drive those away too.

As the sun wavers down, Lena tires of standing outside and goes to the treehouse instead. Her hands grasp a lone rock, and she watches herself strike, strike the wall until the letters of his name are nothing more than a long-gone whisper against the wood. She smacks the wall with her fist until it aches hot with blood, and then she does it four more times.

She always wanted to be like Lex. She can barely breathe for fear that she is.

Kara finds her there, fingers cradled in unmarred palm, slumped against the wall opposite the names. Lena does not look up, and Kara does not speak. She sits close, close enough that the cloud of Lena’s breath fogs Kara’s glasses in the evening chill, and uncurls Lena’s fingers, takes her bloodied hand in her own.

Lena falls asleep first, Kara only minutes later. They wake when the sun does, but neither leaves for some time.

 

 

The house feels big without him, and it is the wrong kind of big, the kind of big that shadows become at night when they are cast against her wall. 

Even two years later, when the continued existence of his room has become a lie—he’ll come back, it says; the Lex you knew will come back—it feels wrong when there is no one across from her at the table, no foot to kick against her own, no smile to soothe the uneven patter of her fear.

And, Lena thinks, maybe this was how it was supposed to be. Maybe those years of camaraderie were the real falsehood; maybe she is destined for a seat across from no one.

It’s easier, almost, to think it. It rids her lungs of the _Lex, Lex how could you?_ they ache to voice. It rids her of the fear that Kara will someday realize the error of her ways, realize how brilliant, how kind, how funny, how— How _amazing_ she is. She’ll leave, Lena knows. Someday. 

She ignores Kara’s text, and the three calls that come after. She ignores the knock on her window and the pleading footsteps that follow her around school the next day. And if Lena cannot bring herself to look up for fear she will see her and melt into longing, into wanting, then that is fine. That is how it had to be.

 

 

Kara sits with two boys at lunch. She has seen them before, has nothing against them—one is in her computer science class, the other a photographer for the newspaper—but her stomach floods with panic all the same. Her feet twitch to carry her over, say _sorry, I’m so sorry_ until Kara forgives her.

(Lena knows it would take precisely one apology before she is forgiven. Lena wants it to take thousands.)

Instead she starts to eat lunch in the lab, surrounded by screwdrivers and parts and manuals. After several days of silence, she begins to build.

 

 

(What if she could build a robot that could do everything? What if she could build a robot that would defend her, warn her when footsteps were heading down the hall to her room? What if she could build a robot that would come and open her window and let her escape, follow her as she ran, ran, ran?)

(She builds a little car instead and forgets to oil one wheel, and it zigzags mournfully across the tabletop.)

 

 

The computer science boy—Winn, Lena’s mind fills in—is the first to enter, and Kara follows behind.

“Do you think we could work in here?” he says. “It’s usually empty, so it would—“

Kara stops with lips open, and Winn follows suit. “L—Lena,” she says. “What are you doing in here?”

It’s obvious, for her plate of food sits empty on the side of the table, parts strewn around it. It’s stupidly, achingly obvious that she is here, eating alone. But Lena does not—cannot—bring herself to say it, so she stares.

(This stare, she knows, is angry. This one is all the coldness and the hurt bottled into one, and it’s all meant for herself. Not for Kara, never for Kara.)

“I was working on something.” She holds up a piece, whichever one her fingers brush first.

Winn breaks the silence with a grimace and a mumble. “Sorry, we’re sorry. We didn’t mean to interrupt.”

He turns to walk away, but Kara doesn’t move.

And though she can feel Kara’s gaze scorching into her scalp, Lena doesn’t look up again.

 

 

(That night, Lena replays the scene over, and over, and over, and tries each time to focus on something different, something that is not Kara. Something that is not the way her fingertips had run through her hair and the way the loose curls had fallen against the hood of her jacket and the way she had smiled that same damn smile she had that day in the treehouse, so many years ago.)

(Lena fails; it is all she can think of. Kara is all she can think of, all she has been thinking of for some time now, and she cries herself to sleep not for pain of family, but for lack of friend.)

 

 

Kara comes back to the lab the next day, just like Lena knew she would, so Lena makes sure not to be there. Kara comes back for four more days and then stops, but Lena feels her gaze every time they pass in the hallways, and it aches. 

Alex glares at her from across the library one day, and Lena knows Kara must have spoken to her. Lena has always liked Alex, and it feels painfully right for this person, this _good_ person, to hate her in this way.

 

* * *

 

Her mother never screams, for that would be too undignified, too improper. Lena wishes she did. Anger, that beast, she could handle, could understand.

But Lillian does not do anger. Lillian does cold fury, pounded down into a dense, unbreakable mass. Lillian whispers, voices her disappointments and her disgust in tones so low Lena knows they are meant only for her, meant to settle deep within and never be spread.

After several minutes of _how dare you_ and _failure_ and _after all we’ve done for you_ , Lena storms out of the house and up the rickety ladder before she can consciously appreciate the idea that here, now, after everything, the treehouse is still here. The treehouse is still _hers_.

 

 

Only, the second her head clears the floor of the treehouse, she realizes she is not alone. Kara is there, fingers aimlessly wandering over the L of her name. She looks over, eyes wide with guilt.

And suddenly, Lena is twelve again, only it is her eyes peeking over the ledge now. She wants it back, that easier time. 

“S—Sorry. I don’t usually trespass, I swear,” Kara says. “I know it’s your treehouse.”

There’s a beat of silence that stretches into a measure, and Kara refuses to meet her gaze. It’s an offer: _say the word, I’ll leave, I’ll go. I won’t come back, even though I want to._

It’s real, now, this possibility of truly messing this up, if she hasn’t already. The idea that she could lose Kara forever, never get her back—(the idea that she _had_ her at one point, that Kara chose to come once and then back again, never fails to trip her heart into a painful stumble)—is more painful than she ever thought possible.

It has been months without that face, those fidgeting hands, those eyes.

“That’s never stopped you before” Lena says, and it sounds all the world like the apology she has been holding for so long.

 

 

They sit as they always have: back against wall, feet intertwined.

Kara tells her about James and how he convinced her to join the newspaper and how the editor-in-chief has to be the meanest person she has ever met.

She tells her about Winn and slips in that he kissed her once, one afternoon when they were sitting on the bean bags in her room working on a history project, and Lena can feel her heart stutter and stop, and it is only when Kara sticks out her tongue that it begins to pump again.

“Winn— He’s great,” she says. “You’d love him. But he’s my _friend_.”

And Lena understands; she does. But the word  _friend_ settles itself somewhere beside her gut all the same, and it burns.

“I’m glad I’m here,” Kara says, and Lena hears an unspoken _with you._

“Me too,” she says, and she does not know which words she is answering.

 

 

Lena sits with Kara, James, and Winn at lunch the next day, and Kara is right: she does like Winn. He is funny and all too kind to her when she does not even know him. Despite only ever speaking to him during that ill-fated encounter in the lab, he laughs at her jokes anyway, and it feels right, this table, this group.

She likes James too, and the easy way he scoots over to allow her space, the way he asks before plucking the first french fry off her plate but takes the second with only a sly smile.

But she mostly likes the way Kara’s knee is pressed against hers under the table, and the way Kara will meet her gaze and smile that special smile, that wisp of a grin that promises so much more underneath, each and every time.

Lunch ends all too quickly, but Kara grabs her hand and pulls her toward the lockers, rambling on about some teacher, some assignment.

Lena remembers nothing but the heat of Kara’s skin against her own.

 

 

She goes up to the treehouse that afternoon, knows Kara will be there. And she is, of course, she is, but she’s sitting in _Lena’s_ spot, against _Lena’s_ wall.

Kara smiles, knows exactly what she has done. “I thought we’d switch it up.”

The words, so innocent, so _okay_ , still shake Lena to her core. Change has never been kind to her, and even here with Kara, she cannot shake the fear.

Kara seems to sense this, seems to see the way Lena ducks her gaze, and she pats the wood next to her. “Come here. We can share this side.”

Lena gets there first next time, but Kara still sits next to her.

 

* * *

 

Kara has only been inside Lena’s house four or five times, and Lena computes the calculation quickly: less than once per year of friendship. One out of every five hundred or so days, a mere .2% of the time, and it is ridiculous, this inability to _be_ that hangs over her still.

Lillian leaves for a week, and Lena immediately pulls Kara inside, races her from room to room.

(When Kara catches up and pulls Lena into a tight embrace, the house seems to shrink, back to what it was before, before Lex and loneliness and everything that darkens her dreams at night. It flickers from a house into a home, and maybe it is just that Kara is here, but it feels right either way.)

 

 

Kara beats her to her bedroom and picks up a pillow, and as soon as Lena steps into the room, Kara smacks her.

Lena stumbles back, eyes wide, as Kara whoops in glee. “What are you doing?” Lena manages.

“You’ve never had a pillow fight?” Kara does not wait for an answer, for she knows the truth already: of course not. That was not allowed, not here. “Well, there’s a first time for everything.”

 

 

She knows Kara has learned this from her sister, and it burns a bit, the way Lex used to smile and the way Alex still smiles and how it all seems to fall on _Lena_. 

But Kara is laughing and Lena is laughing and for once, for once— The pain fades.

And when Kara trips over a pillow on the floor, she falls into the arms Lena holds out for her.

(Of course she catches her. Always, she always will.)

 

 

Kara’s hands are soft against her as she fumbles about, righting herself, and they rest on Lena’s biceps for a beat too long.

They are close, Kara’s foot nudged awkwardly between Lena’s, and _god_ , it is so easy for her to lean in. It is easy to smile when Kara gasps, quiet against her lips, and it is even easier to let herself do this, let her hands toy with the hem of Kara’s shirt aimlessly, squeeze her eyes shut until colors waltz across her vision as a reminder that _this is real, this is real_. 

 

 

When she leans back, she starts to laugh, and Kara, oh _Kara_ , knows better than to ask. She simply smiles, watches Lena with a great deal of affection, and soon enough she is laughing too.

And for a moment, Lena simply looks at Kara, notices the blue-green of her eyes up close and the way her heart pounds, frantic against Lena’s fingers near her neck.

 

* * *

 

They never sit on opposite sides of the treehouse anymore. They are always close, playing a game of shy brushes of wrist against wrist, foot against foot, until one—Lena, always Lena—gives in, gives up, and leans in to kiss Kara.

They are too big for this treehouse, too tall, and Lena does not fit in its corners the way she used to, but there is no need for corners anymore, not when she feels like she could take over the whole world and then some.

 

* * *

 

Kara brings a rock up to the treehouse, and Lena thinks back to the day Lex left, the day she scraped his name off the wall of the treehouse and hoped it would scrape away his hold on her heart.

It hadn’t, but time had, and the rock is simply a memory to her now.

“What’s that for?”

Kara gives it to her in reply, grasps Lena’s hands in her own.

And slowly, she begins to lead their hands, knocking into the wood just as they had each done so long ago. She traces a curve over part of Lena’s name, a line down, and it is only then that Lena realizes what is being drawn.

The scar of Lex’s name still mars the piece of wood but now— The names Lena and Kara, bordered by a freshly carved heart, glow brighter.

 

 

Lena drops the rock, hears the clack of wood against stone, but her gaze does not leave the carving.

“I’m glad you came to find me.” _Back when you moved in. When I tried to leave you. Every day_. It’s the _I love you_ she is fighting against herself to say, and Kara knows it.

Kara bumps her shoulder against Lena’s. “Mm, well, I’m really just here for the treehouse.”

Lena laughs, an easy sound. “It’s great, right?” And it is: this treehouse, this home, has held so much of her.

A hum in reply, a glance. The touch of Kara’s hand against her own, and then: “Yeah. Yeah, it really is. But you’re better.”

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on [tumblr](http://lenaluthorisgay.tumblr.com) for more gay crises


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